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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29379975">the river’s edge is safer than you think, baby, why don’t we take a little dip</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/zfic/pseuds/zfic'>zfic</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Tangled (2010)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Drabble, F/M, listen sometimes you just have to write things, talking about being in love, worldy eugene</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:54:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,464</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29379975</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/zfic/pseuds/zfic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Eugene and Rapunzel have a quiet conversation about what being in love might mean</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider &amp; Rapunzel, Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider/Rapunzel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the river’s edge is safer than you think, baby, why don’t we take a little dip</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i saw a post by runningracingdancingchasing about Bill Perkin’s concept art (pictured) and inspiration STRUCK like greased lightning ayee</p>
<p>    tangled - canon compliant</p>
<p>    rated: m (for language and vague topics ish kind of)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p>“Have you ever been in love, Eugene?”</p>
<p>Rapunzel’s question took him aback, though <em>apart </em>might be a more appropriate word. He’d taken refuge a little while back against a fallen log, south of the clearing they’d set their makeshift camp up.</p>
<p>After she’d healed his hand and he returned from collecting more firewood, she seemed distracted. He wondered if it had anything to do with him and all that they’d talked about, but when she said she was fine, that it was nothing, he opted to take her word for it, playing casual acceptance in case she felt he was prying.</p>
<p>She’d talk about it if she needed to, right?</p>
<p>Not that he was worried about her.</p>
<p>Maybe he was.</p>
<p>Shut-up, this wasn’t about him.</p>
<p>Rapunzel had curled up in a cocoon made of her own hair (because of course she could) without another word.</p>
<p>And it wasn’t like he’d be falling asleep anytime so soon following his big reveal (he’s an orphan, yay!) Eugene found his way to this sequestered spot, unwilling to go far, but needed enough space around him to stretch, to think, to not get caught glancing at her huddled form every few seconds.</p>
<p>Sitting there, he stared at the sky through a break in the leafy canopy above him. How often had he watched the night come and go like this? How often had he been alone?</p>
<p>The dull warmth of the fire over his shoulder almost had him turning round to check Rapunzel was still there.</p>
<p>He crossed his arms, forcing air from between his lips as he hunkered down against the withering bark behind him. The more time he spent with the weirdo the less time he spent planning his dastardly plans of thievery. Some part of him, a small and decreasingly significant part of him, wondered why he shouldn’t just cut his way back through the forest and make good on her guarantee that tearing her tower down brick by brick wouldn’t turn up with what he wanted.</p>
<p>Flynn Rider told himself that rifling around in the rubble of a forgotten tower didn’t particularly scream style or swagger and that sticking around blondie merited at least an attempt at seducing the tiara’s location out of her.</p>
<p>Eugene wasn’t convinced of either of those options.</p>
<p>And he might as well admit, sat here in the dark and far, far away from her (because there wasn’t any guarantee her magic hair didn’t give her mind-reading powers, too) he liked her. He’d not been exposed to anything like her love of, well, <em>everything </em>in a while.</p>
<p>Sifting through his memories of the orphanage, of leaving and trudging through the world with half a dream and a hope the world would grant him it (it didn’t) nothing from his past matched with her light for life.</p>
<p>Even when he tried to go straight in a land a thousand and one miles from here, working behind the bar of a respectable, if a little shabby, inn. He did good work and for once got on with the owner and his wife, a couple that had similar starts in life to him and were as much devoted to their children as they were to each other.</p>
<p>Imposter syndrome hit him like a <em>bitch.</em></p>
<p>So he cut himself out the picture. And it would’ve been a clean getaway if the owner’s wife didn’t catch him in the act. He didn’t steal a penny from them, but guilt consumed him, regardless.</p>
<p>
  <em>You know you don’t have to go.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Adventure awaits, madam. I stay down too long-</em>
</p>
<p><em>And</em> <em>you’ll be fine.</em></p>
<p>He had sobered, quickly, like he wasn’t drunk on the possibility of escape in the first place, and met her eye.</p>
<p>
  <em>I’m not right for a place like this.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Maybe not. But somewhere you might be. Maybe it’ll be the next town over, or the next, or the next.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I doubt-</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>But you’ll know it when you find it. Because leaving, even the mere thought of it, will hurt more than staying ever did.</em>
</p>
<p>If he had a sibling, he was sure this is what it would’ve felt like to have one.</p>
<p>He left, anyway. His heart uncharacteristically heavy as Alain Renee, his pseudonym at the time, closed the door on the closest thing to family he’d felt in a long, long time.</p>
<p>And it was on these thoughts that he brooded over when Rapunzel let her presence be known, slinging him so quickly into the present he almost died from whiplash.</p>
<p>“Have you ever been in love, Eugene?”</p>
<p>He turned his head left, where she’d folded her arms over the log, resting her cheek on top. She wasn’t looking at him, rather, studying a ladybug that crawled its way to her, curious, cautious, its wings peeking out from beneath its shell.</p>
<p>Eugene cleared his throat softly before turning his attention back to the sky, “Once or twice, I guess.”</p>
<p>“You guess?”</p>
<p>“I <em>thought</em> I was in love. Turned out wrong.”</p>
<p>“Oh.”</p>
<p>“You?”</p>
<p>She snorted, “You’re kidding, right?”</p>
<p>He tipped his head to the side, a conceding smile pulling at his mouth in acknowledgement of her point, “I mean, you can fall in love with anything. You don’t need to want to fuck it to be in love with it.”</p>
<p>“‘Fuck’?”</p>
<p>He blinked, ignoring everything within him that flared to life at the sound of the curse on her tongue.</p>
<p>“Uh,” he cleared his throat for a second time, “to have relations with it.”</p>
<p>A pause, then-</p>
<p>“<em>Oh</em>,” she dragged the word out, “Relations. Right.”</p>
<p>Dangerous ground. Divert, divert.</p>
<p>It was his turn to snort and he looked back up at her, “Your mother gave you the talk, right?”</p>
<p>Not like that.</p>
<p>Rapunzel tensed suddenly, and he panicked, hoping his question didn’t hit a nerve. But she sighed and gave a limp shrug, “I asked how babies were born when I was like, twelve, and the next week she brought home a lewd cartoon that made me cry.”</p>
<p>“Ouch.”</p>
<p>What kind of witch did that to a kid?</p>
<p>“I guess it was her way of making sure a man didn’t take advantage of what wasn’t his.”</p>
<p>Not her words, that was clear enough. He opened his mouth to reply, tell her <em>something, </em>when she spoke up again.</p>
<p>“So, when I see a really pretty cloud, and it’s just - it makes me feel free and happy when I look at it - and I want to be where the cloud is, and I’d give anything to hold that cloud and fly away with it - am I in love with it?”</p>
<p>He considered it, rifling through memories of the bawdy romantic novels he’d inhaled as a young (and horny) teenager and what they told him love should feel like. Passion and sex and titillation and adrenaline. What he’d then go on to mistake for real love when he encountered someone willing to give him half the time of day and the rest of the night.</p>
<p>What an idiot.</p>
<p>“You could say that, yeah.”</p>
<p>“Oh.”</p>
<p>He didn’t like <em>that</em> 'oh’.</p>
<p>“Does the cloud do anything else for you that isn’t floating pretty in the sky?” He asked, forcing his voice into something as casual as possible, maybe she’d realise he wasn’t an expert on the topic, either, that they could work it out together.</p>
<p>“No. Not much else,” she frowned as she thought again, “Am I in love with Pascal?”</p>
<p>“Who?”</p>
<p>She rolled her eyes, “My chameleon.”</p>
<p>“Oh, the frog.”</p>
<p>“<em>Eugene</em>.”</p>
<p>If the curseword sounded awful coming from her (not awful), his name sounded worse (not worse). He almost choked.</p>
<p>“Well, he’s your friend, right? I guess you can be in love with your friend.”</p>
<p>“It doesn’t - it doesn’t feel the same, though,” she picked at the bark with the tip of her nail, the ladybird had disappeared.</p>
<p>“I suppose it’s down to one thing, then.”</p>
<p>Rapunzel finally met his gaze with her own expectant one and his heart stuttered in his chest.</p>
<p>“When you look at the thing you’re in love with, does it make your stomach go all-”</p>
<p>“Fluttery?”</p>
<p>Which could mean anything from desire to a simple embrace. Needing something from the other person you don’t really want from anyone else. Wanting to touch her hair again, her lips, hold her hand and watch her face light up at another new discovery, or confirming something she already knew, or deduced, and the only intelligible thought you can really come up with is: <em>damn</em>.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” he breathed, “fluttery.”</p>
<p>She stared at him a moment longer, before her eyes slid from his and back down to her finger on the bark, “Hm.”</p>
<p>And then without another word, she stood and walked back to camp.</p>
<p>Eugene spent the next day finding out what being in love really entailed.</p>
<p> </p>
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